It has been a busy week at County Hall with the regular Cabinet meeting on Wednesday seeing a number of key decisions being made.

The main event saw a number of key topics coming before senior councillors from parking to housing and even a new town.

Council kick starts new town

The Cabinet meeting on Wednesday saw councillors agree to press ahead with buying land at Langarth Farm which would allow them to build 154 new homes.

It is the first in an expected series of interventions which the council wants to make on land on the outskirts of Truro which has planning permission for 2,700 homes and various other facilities.

This has been put together by the council to create a new town which could house up to 8,000 people and be similar in size to St Ives, Launceston or Liskeard.

The council has been critical of what is currently planned for the sites with Cabinet member Bob Egerton describing it as a "fragmented series of estates with infrastructure delivered late".

To help with the latter point the council is also set to buy some mixed-use land which would be used to build a primary school. Mr Egerton told the Cabinet that the overall development could eventually have two new primary schools and a secondary school.

The decision on whether to go ahead with the purchase of the land will be made by the full council next month.

Chaos in the car park

Car parking charges to change

Wednesday's meeting also saw the council agree to move forward with a positive parking framework which is aiming to improve the council's car parks .

There are currently 280 car parks operated by the council across Cornwall and one of the major projects is to change how people pay for parking.

In future the council wants to have all car parks operating a pay-on-exit system so that people don't have to rush back to their cars when visiting town centres as their parking tickets are running out.

The system is set to be trialled in 12 car parks with new technology being installed to bring about the change. It will also mean that enforcement officers can spend their time on the streets rather than peering into the windscreens of cars in car parks.

Cabinet member for transport, Geoff Brown, also said he wants to improve the park and ride service in Truro and is considering "zoning" car parks to make it cheaper to park further from town centres.

Cornwall Council could be looking to build new schools to serve planned new town at Truro (Image: Pixabay)